WELCOME TO THE BLOG
This blog serves my columns as an archive, a place to add footnotes,data sources and drafts of my weekly 550 word column for the Sky Hi News.(www.skyhidailynews.com) Often these drafts are posted on my Facebook page, The Muftic Forum.. To learn more about the posting subject, click onto the links at the end of the posting.Blog will be on vacation May 28-June 25 2018, with sporadic to no postings during that time.
I remove comments containing expletives and not in English.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

The eleven hour long grilling of Hillary Clinton by
Republican members of the House Benghazi select committee last week had some
unintended consequences for the GOP. Not only did their attack dog prosecutorial
tone fail to rattle her, it gave her an opportunity to demonstrate in a very
public way she had the self-control, stamina, and intelligence that a president
would need. The overt attempt by GOP committee members to
trip her up with loaded questions, to get her to incriminate herself with her
answers, also became additional proof of the partisan nature of the committee
and did nothing to restore its credibility.
What did come out of her answer to a GOP
committee member’s question is a fact that may in the long term diminish the
importance of another issue dogging her, her emails on a private server.

The highly partisan dominated GOP committee began the
hearings with a strike against their credibility by a whistle blowing ex staff
member and statements by two members of
the House that the committee’s purpose was to hurt her candidacy. As even committee chair, Rep. Trey Goudy, admitted afterward, no
new facts resulted. Perhaps he meant no
new facts emerged that could bring down her poll numbers.

Goudy had begun his opening case statement against her with
trying to link the negatives of Benghazi to Clinton’s private emails. He failed. What fact did emerge was to her
advantage, that the decision making and communications of a Secretary of States’
office were made in staff briefings, one to one conversations, and mostly with old
fashioned cables, not by emails. This may
explain why so little evidence of use of the private server has shown any
impact on national security. Only an unfinished
investigation by the FBI to see there was “gross negligence” in handling
classified and non-classified documents remains. .

The GOP committee members substantiated the partisan purpose
of the hearing with their attitudes and questions that were not fact seeking,
but were questions prefaced and constructed to make a public case for their
accusations.

Adding to suspicions
of GOP partisanship, the role of other major players had not gotten the same
public exposure. Many questions and answers essential to protecting diplomats in
the future are buried in written documentation, prior investigations, and
hearing transcripts.

Instead, GOP committee
members were preoccupied with posing questions that explored conspiracy
theories for the world to see, aimed at pinning blame on Clinton herself.

Particularly glaring
was the committee’s failure to give equal public grilling of CIA and military officials. Why were there intelligence
failures and why was the military positioned too far away to come to the aid of
a besieged ambassador?

There were other unasked pertinent questions deserving a high profile public airing: What happened in the State Department that
fumbled the Ambassador’s request for more security? Was underfunding truly an issue requiring
prioritization? Why was the ambassador’s
visit not seen as deserving priority? What measures has the State Department taken
to reduce the possibility of a future attack against our diplomats? How and why
did post-Gaddafi Libya’s democratically elected governance fail? What lessons
learned can be applied to future situations when a dictator is deposed?

A version of this was published in the www.skyhidailynews.com October 29-30, 2015

For more, visit www.mufticforumblog.blogspot.com

Polls taken a few days after the Benghazi hearings confirm the hearings helped Clinton diminish the issue of her private server emails and gave her a bump in favorablility while reducing the favorability of the committee.
In short, the GOP strategy of grilling her backfired on them. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/258940-after-benghazi-hearing-polling-up-for-clinton-emails

Monday, October 19, 2015

Why military intervention does not work out; a strong warning to hawks

Fareed Zakaria on CNN Sunday, October 18, 2015, delivered a strong warning to those who think the definition of American strength , its exceptionalism, and leadership is military intervention. He reviews both the Russian experience and the US since the Eisenhower administration and the resulting disasters, humanitarian, quagmire and occupation and failure then and now as a lesson for the future. He praises Dwight Eisenhower's wisdom for bucking public sentiment for military action.

I strongly agree and those who are rational could agree as well because evidence is based on experience . Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I yield my posting this week to him.

For his excellent concise comment on the subject, go to http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1510/18/fzgps.01.html

Sunday, October 11, 2015

As a former county clerk myself, the county
clerk who refused to issue marriage
licenses to same sex couples because it violated her religious beliefs, got me
thinking about the differences between a country ruled by laws that were
secular, not connected
with religious or spiritual matters, and a country ruled by an official state religion. The U.S. is governed
by secular laws.

That issue, secular vs religious rule, dominated debates in American history among and within the colonies, but it became
one of the compromises expressed in the First Amendment when the Constitution was
formulated and ratified. It forbad
Congress from establishing a state religion and protected freedom to practice
one’s own religion.

Our founding fathers
were influenced by their bitter
experience with persecution under the English kings who also served as the
religious rulers by divine right and the
divisive practices of some colonies , such as the Puritans of Massachusetts who
substituted persecution justified by one religious belief with another just as
cruel.

In modern times the issue of separation of church and state
has been the subject of many a US Supreme Court rulings. Sometimes other Constitutional provisions such
as the 14th Amendment that established the right of equal protection
under the law seem to conflict with the First Amendment. The Supreme Court is the arbiter that resolves
those conflicts and they ruled in 2014 that equal protections trumped laws in those states that had passed laws motivated by
religious beliefs of their majority forbidding same sex marriage.

A key to a stable, successful
democracy is a rule of secular law that protects minority interests. Failure to do so has hobbled many wannabe
democracies .The tension within secular states vs Islamist advocates of Sharia
law , the religious laws derived from interpretations of the Koran, have played
out in the Arab Spring . In Egypt ,deposed
President Mubarek’s secular law was replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Sharia
type laws that resulted in persecution of Christians and others, followed by a military coup that re-established secular
law. In Turkey, a government tried to
replace the secular laws of Ataturk
(founder of modern Turkey) with more Islamist ones. The result has been many demonstrations,
bombings and unrest, attempted power grabs, and changes in leadership. The Nobel peace prize was just awarded to a
group in Tunisia who hammered out a compromise between Islamists and secularists,
though the country is still a home to
many Islamic extremists.

Most American elected
and appointed officials swear on a Bible to uphold the laws of the land which
are secular. Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis, refused to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples because
she was
acting because of her religious beliefs that forbad her to do so. Her action resulted in jail time for contempt of
court.

Another Kentucky clerk opined :
" Why take away the majority's right [just] to give the minority their
rights?” Send her back to school for civics lessons.The
First and 14th amendment protects minority rights from being
trampled by the majority , but they are not
enforced under the authority of state sponsored religion but under the
authority of the secular Constitution.

Felicia Muftic served as Denver County Clerk from
1983-1991.
A version of this appeared in the www.skyhidailynews.com October 23, 2015

Monday, October 5, 2015

There are some public policy positions being promoted by a
variety of politicians that just do not seem logical. Often good politics trump reason, especially
when they invigorate the juices of their
political bases. Take the examples of
the failed attempt in Congress to block the Iran nuclear deal and some freedom
of religion arguments advanced by the GOP.

The logical element
of the Iran deal is that it will keep war from happening immediately, and maybe
even in a distant future, though much can change in a decade for better or for
worse. On the other hand, failure to
pass the deal would have freed all other participants to drop any sanctions and
they had made that clear they would do so. Clearly sanctions by one country,
the US, would not be effective in changing Iran’s behavior any more than they
were against Cuba. Sanctions by the larger international community were the
only leverage against Iran. Iran could
develop nuclear weapons in a few months. Past cyber attacks, assassinations of scientists, and
bombing runs caused only temporary setbacks. With the deal, violations of sanctions will
trigger automatic reinstatement of international sanctions and military action
is still an option. There will be constant monitoring of nuclear sites capable
of nuclear weapons production and supply lines, with some level of inspections
lasting past the ten year period.

Opponents to the deal
ginned up fear, not reason. Their argument: Iran’s government had bad policies toward its
people and was untrustworthy. The deal does not rely on trust or love. Inspections
are regarded by the international community as the most stringent ever imposed
on any country. Unable to refute that,
the opponents just ignored or distorted the inspection protocols in their multi-
million dollar ad campaign full of misleading statements and instead, scared
the public into opposing the deal.

In preparation for the 2016 elections, a fear mongering ad
is running against Colorado Democratic Senate incumbent, Michael Bennet claiming
he will be responsible for a nuclear holocaust caused by his vote in favor of
the Iran deal. This ad, with multi lingual countdown by children, is similar to
the one Democrats used effectively against GOP presidential candidate Barry
Goldwater in 1964 who had indicated a willingness to use nukes. It depicted a
child counting daisy petals followed by a nuclear blast. Bennet has a reasoned case to make the Iran
deal would immediately make a nuclear war less likely.

Also illogical is the GOP’s freedom of religion argument
that same sex marriage destroys religious freedom. Same sex marriage is contrary to religious beliefs
held by many who would like government to force others to uphold their views
and step on others ’rights. In 2014 the Supreme Court ruled same sex couples
must be allowed to marry nationwide regardless if state laws permit marriage
only by heterosexual couples. The ruling was particularly pertinent to
officials issuing marriage licenses. A county clerk was jailed when she refused
to issue licenses to same sex couples because it violated her religious
beliefs. She has always been free to resign or run for another office, and she
is still protected by the Constitution to continue her crusade elsewhere.
Noticed: the ruling did not prevent heterosexual marriage.

A version of this was published in the Sky Hi Daily News (www.skyhidailynews.com) October 8,9, 2015

For more, visit the July 19, 2015 posting “The GOP comes out swinging against the
Iran deal…. Also see the 8/2/15 blog posting: Heads up, spinners at work on the Iran deal....for a critique of the anti Iran deal ads

Felicia Muftic is a former Denver County Clerk who was sworn
in to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.

About Me

Felicia Muftic is a political columnist with the Sky Hi Daily News, Grand County, Colorado. She writes on current events from a pragmatic, fact based, reasoned perspective.
Felicia has nearly 50 years of involvement in politics, finance,and consumer affairs as either a fly on the wall in international, national, state and local levels or a participant.
Parallel to all of this is intense involvement for over 50 years in the the political process, serving in both cabinet and staff in the administration of Mayor Federico Pena . Partially educated in Europe and married to physician-refugee from the Balkans, her interests are not confined to US domestic problems, but she also has a world view and experiences which are often reflected in her columns.
Felicia Muftic es un columnista político del diario Sky News Hola, Grand County, Colorado. Felicia tiene casi 50 años de participación en la política, las finanzas y de asuntos del consumidor, ya sea como una mosca en la pared en la internacional, nacional, estatal y local o de un participante. Para más información, visite www.mufticforum.com